This photo gives off "a hot guy just walked into the bar" vibes.

A complementary "a hot guy is walking to the bar, quickly, check out his ass" vibes.

I’m gonna need to remember this prompt for when I’m having a bad day

AITA for eating plastic?

I (12NM) have worked out a system with my roommate (30s, F) wherein I can let her know that I’m hungry and need more food by chewing on plastic, something she hates. Given that she does not speak Cat, this is a reliable way for me to pass along information. However, I also find chewing plastic fun and tasty on its own merits. This causes my roommate to ineffectively curse at me. AITA for eating plastic whenever the hell I feel like it, whether there’s food in my bowl or not?

I just remembered this from r/BestofRedditorUpdates: Cat seeks judgement from Reddit after biting their owner’s feet

There’s an update and cat pictures.

Once you start noticing how the incapacity to handle discomfort affects how people live their lives it's actually pretty shocking how it ruins pretty much every conceivable aspect of existence. Interpersonal relationships, romantic and platonic. Career and education opportunities. Your politics Your willingness to go anywhere. The kind of food you eat. The kind of art you expose yourself to and your ability to read it. It's never just one thing, it touches everything, and once you notice it it's like suddenly being able to see germs or something. Just this horrific catastrophe people look at you askance for screaming about. As I grow older and see what became of my friends and peers who could not learn to handle discomfort, the more I'm like. This is a genuine societal issue

When you can't handle discomfort, eventually discomfort itself starts to feel like you're under attack. Your body enters flight or fight mode, and your amygdala starts screaming at you that you are In Danger even when the "danger" in question is like, making an unpleasant phone call or like, you're reading a book about something gross.

Your ability to make frank assessments about your situation becomes compromised, because, well, when you're under attack who's going to stay still and go "Let me think this through?" Of course you're going to panic. The phone call isn't just unpleasant, it's potentially life-ruining. Someone is going to think you're dumb and that's going to be TRUE and then I guess you die or something except dying would be better. The book isn't just gross, it's actively coming for you, tainting your mind with the memory of its contents, it has RUINED you.

Obviously, you want to try avoiding danger whenever possible. So you create a world in which you avoid all dangerous things. Traveling? Well that's scary, what if you get robbed or lost? Better to avoid it (plus there are so many things to read, rules to remember, forms to fill out... it's just too much, it makes you uncomfortable, which means YOU'RE IN DANGER, what if you FORGET SOMETHING CRITICAL? Better to avoid). A new job? Well what if it's worse than your current one? You at least know the rules here. The unknown is so much more uncomfortable, which is DANGEROUS, so better to stay where you are. A dark-skinned foreigner? Do they even speak English? You don't know how you'd communicate. They don't know the laws here, surely? Plus what if other people think you're racist? It's so uncomfortable which means THEY ARE A DANGER. Best to avoid at all costs, keeping your bag clutched tightly to your chest. Vaccines? You don't really know what's in them. The explanations have a lot of words you don't understand,you said something that was kind of rude? UNCOMFORTABLE. THIS PERSON IS ATTACKING YOU. FIGHT OR FLIGHT. Someone says you were incorrect about something? DANGER. Someone says you reacted impulsively and seem to have misconstrued someone's words as a personal attack? YET ANOTHER ATTACK.

Eventually you lose yourself and become this. I don't even know. This totally reactive thing, unable to think analytically about anything (which is uncomfortable and a danger), unable to assess harms, unable to encounter anything new without having a meltdown. And none of it is a real escape because, well, you've created a life defined entirely by aversion to discomfort, which is the most uncomfortable life you can possibly imagine. Of course such people end up falling into fascist ideas about Why Your Life Sucks. When you build a life around trying to maintain as comfortable an equilibrium as possible, you cauterize the parts of you capable of growth, expansion, creativity, learning; at the same time, the knowledge of your own stuntedness is haunting so best not to think about that either. The world becomes this horrifying mirror maze where the only way to survive without offing yourself is by projecting your flaws onto others, bitterly externalizing your self-hatred (who could live like this and NOT hate themselves) just to avoid turning it inward. You end up living like a hollowed-out sea urchin

A lot of people I've met seem to think that mental healthiness is characterized by a lack of discomfort whatsoever, and are therefore justified in building a life where all discomforts can be avoided. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse. Lord knows I have had colossally shitty times and wished I could just retreat into bed and fall asleep for as long as needed for everything to blow over. But like. You also have to understand that that's a fantasy, not a solution. When you have grown up living a crap life with nothing but discomfort, the ability to avoid it feels like exercising autonomy. But you really do have to be careful about making this your life ethos. I know so many people who have lapsed into total learned helplessness, so consumed by discomfort (mentally catastrophized into dangers) re: looking dumb, looking rude, looking X, looking Y that they just. Idk. Don't do anything except be bitter. You don't have to be that way. The solution isn't "tough it out" because that's also just a manifestation of your inability to handle discomfort. I also hesitate to say the solution is to focus on how much better your life will be when you do X and Y, because the entire point of the inability to handle discomfort is that it constantly manifests in precluding the possibility of even wanting X and Y in the first place since to want it and not be able to do it IS in itself another source of discomfort.

Idk what the solution is, exactly. I just think it's important to understand that sometimes things can feel awful and still not necessarily harm you

Genuine question here: what the fuck does 'handle discomfort' mean if it isn't toughing it out? It's discomfort; you're inherently not going to be comfortable with it and you're attempting to not avoid it unless there's a reason beyond the discomfort itself, so 'endure it' seems like the only option?

Good question!

I make a distinction between "enduring/tolerating discomfort" and "toughing it out" for a few, entirely connotative reasons:

1) I don't adore the use of the phrase "toughing it out" because it isn't as though failure to do so is because someone's a huge weenie or anything. The dividing line between the capacity to handle discomfort vs incapacity has less to do with toughness as it does being armed with effective coping skills and willingness to engage in controlled exposure

2) Oftentimes, "toughing it out" IS a failure to tolerate discomfort. There's a sort of hypermasculine posturing that you see across genders where their inability to deal with discomfort manifests in very ostentatious displays of machismo to deny they feel ANY discomfort at all. It's the same underlying psychological problems, but their brains are stuck in "Fight" mode constantly. You see this a lot with super aggro people, people who can't have civil disagreements without screaming, people who think any display of vulnerability is gay or soy or whatever. If you say you're dealing with something difficult, it's met with sneering disdain and loud dismissal about your softness. It, too, comes from an inability to deal with the discomfort! (Especially the inability to deal with being perceived as uncomfortable)

I tried to be pretty neutral about my wording about this because this manifests in both anxiety/shying away AND being constantly in-your-face and combative, but I think most people on this site kind of default to thinking I'm talking about the former situation and the need to "toughen up" in that respect. But really, this shows up in a lot of different ways, and for a lot of people "toughening up" in response to discomfort is the exact problem they have to combat

So in long distance running (and probably other sports, but this is the only one I know) there's a few ideas that might be useful to this, because it's a fundamentally uncomfortable hobby. Regardless of how good of shape you are in, you will hit a pace or distance or context in which running is uncomfortable. And for some runs that you do, dealing with the discomfort is the point.

We have these things called tempo runs, and they suck. You decide what your fastest reliable pace is for a given distance, and then you run it. This is probably slightly slower than your all out race pace, or it is that pace for a smaller distance. For example, if I am training for a 10k run, I might run 8k at race pace, or 10k 10-15 seconds slower per kilometre. You have almost as much exertion as a race, but none of the pomp or excitement that makes a race bearable. But there are three reasons we do them, and two are useful here.

First, it gets you used to being uncomfortable while running. Generally, your mind will give up before your body does. It is seeking to avoid discomfort, which is the whole point of this conversation. But if you train smart and know yourself, you know that you're not in danger. You aren't damaging yourself, you're just pushing yourself. If I run an 8 km tempo run, I know the last 3 of them are going to feel really really hard. You just get used to talking yourself through it. "The discomfort is the point" is half of what I say to myself to get through them, it means it's working. It's proof that you can do hard things. It's important to have that proof for yourself.

Secondly, it lets you hone the skill of knowing when you're just pushing hard and uncomfortable and when you're actually at risk for injury or in danger. It allows you to figure out when discomfort is discomfort and when twinges or pains are signs of danger. It gives you the skill to think through things when you're uncomfortable. If I'm really pushing myself in a run, I'll probably get a little nauseated, but I can now tell when it's just from pushing it. If my knee twinges though, I stop and then I can adjust my pace from there. I know myself well to know danger from discomfort.

Thirdly, they're just fantastic for training. They get the pace into your legs, they push your cardio, and they work your muscles really well. All of this is kinda besides the point now though.

I'm not suggesting everyone get into long distance running. I am suggesting is that people come up with a metaphorical tempo run they can do pretty regularly (I do a tempo run every two or so weeks when I'm running three times a week). Give yourself a space where you're safe and you can experience the discomfort and talk yourself through it. Get used to being smart and analytical about how the discomfort feels to you and pick apart what it is.

Watch the scary movie, even if you're doing it in 20 minute stints. Hold yourself to writing scary emails and give yourself a treat after. Sit down with the thoughts you've been avoiding and journal your way through them. Go to the talk you're not sure about. Start going to small crowds of people and build your way up to concerts. Take a day trip and then start branching further afield. Be graceful when it's hard, be thoughtful when you want to give up. These are trainable skills.

Yeah my most boomer toxic trait is that I genuinely think it's wrong to coddle children and teenagers and that it is actually ok to force kids to do stuff that they don't like or find boring or hard (to a certain extent). You have to train that because as much as it's true that you can always leave, sometimes leaving has a cost that outweighs the benefits of staying in the uncomfortable situation and you need to be able to tolerate discomfort.

I score high in all the self-diagnostic autism tests I do. I genuinely think I might be - I am - autistic but I am happy that I was never diagnosed in childhood - knowing my family they would probably have done their best to accommodate me and that would have deprived me of a lot of growth opportunities in terms of learning how to interact with the world. Of course it's a lot of survivorship bias at bay but sometimes children are like baby otters. You have to force them in the water the first time. Otherwise they'll never swim even if they are perfectly capable of it.

sorry for the nervous breakdown everyone im actuallt fine because i have to be

They should add "On Horseback" option to Google Maps. For writers.

"Hevoslinja" (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words 'skilless in riding and afraid of animals' at the start.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would've also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they're trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it's said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.

also it's not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

it's quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)

computer people love saying words like "orthogonal" and "transparently" and using them to mean literally anything

(tags by @leo60228)

INTERNET HOLE CANNOT SAVE YOU

busytown lunch pals

is it a hot take to say that i think you need to understand why something is bad, not just that it simply is?

this is a part of the problem

you need to be able to explain why you shouldnt use ai rather than “oh well its obviously bad and you shouldnt use it or else youre a bad person” because that isn’t logic. “ai generates child porn based off of real children and whether or not it does is entirely up to how it is built and if pedophiles are able to find ways around those safeguards, because ai cannot in itself discern right from wrong” is a genuine criticism. “amazon tried to build a data center the size of tuson outside of tuson just to power their ai that would’ve increased the inability to stay alive outside in parts of arizona” is a genuine criticism. even “using generative ai teaches you not to learn how to do things yourself even when they’re difficult, devaluing necessary skills out of practice” is a genuine criticism when you look at the amount of people who think they are able of doing a difficult major when they couldnt write their own papers in high school.

but “ai is just bad because it’s bad” will convince no one and is a morally lazy position to take. about anything!

you need to know why reading someone’s diary is wrong if you want to learn about privacy and respect. you need to know why child sexual assault is wrong if you want to be able to help children form healthy age appropriate relationships. you need to know why capitalism is bad if you want to replace it with something else. you need actual concrete ideas and ideologies rather than “you should agree with me because i have the right vibe”

me switching between lmao, lol, haha, and keysmashing to keep my laughter fresh and fun

The energy I'm bringing to 2026.

I wish that predatory lesbians were real ans preying on me

read her her favourite book, that's a valid way of flirting.